A variety of manufactured components contain tubing arranged in configurations suitable for their particular uses. For example, tubes are arranged and secured within harnesses or otherwise clamped together in desired arrangements for the transport of fluid (including both liquids and gases). Several illustrations of such configurations are found in vehicles, where power steering fluids and coolants and the like are delivered through tubing and hoses that must be precisely located and secured within the engine compartment. In these cases, the installation of the tubing is relatively straightforward and not particularly time-consuming.
However there are a multitude of more complex applications in which the article of manufacture contains a large number of tubes each of which must be precisely located relative to the other. One such example is in a tube bank-style heat exchanger, in which individual tubes need to be presented to tube sheets, baffles and other components and precisely fed through corresponding holes in them. Conventional approaches to the manufacture of such devices, and particularly those incorporating polymeric tubes that due to their flexibility pose significant challenges in precisely aligning them to holes and channels through which they must pass, include manual assembly. It will be readily appreciated that this is very laborious and time consuming. And while automated techniques have been developed to handle, position and feed rigid tubes (such as metal tubes) into appropriate receptacles, these approaches are generally not suitable for the manipulation of flexible tubes in assemblies because their orientation is less predictable.
Compounding the problem, and again in tube bank-style heat exchangers using polymeric tubing, there are precise tolerances involved in positioning large numbers of small, flexible tubes within both a specific configuration and a compact design envelope. For example and depending on the application selected, tubes only 2 mm in diameter (or less) but having lengths of 2–3 feet (or more) might be arranged in a series of rows such that they are a mere 1–2 mm apart. In order to automate the process of feeding multiple tubes into a fixed receptacle, it is necessary not only to align the tubes (for example in a column) but also ultimately to position them in a pre-determined and spaced-apart manner.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a device suitable for the incorporation of a plurality of flexible tubes into a core assembly, and in which the tubes are aligned sufficient for insertion within the assembly in a desired configuration. Another object of the invention is to provide for such a device in conjunction with supporting apparatus to ensure that the tubes are pushed into the core assembly in a controlled manner and properly guided into position within the core assembly. A feature of the present invention is that it can accommodate a number of tube structure designs. Another feature is that the device can be made from a wide variety of materials, so long as the material selected is sufficiently rigid to guide the polymeric tubing along its surface without causing damage thereto. The invention offers several advantages, among them an automated process for the installation of flexible tubing into a core assembly such as a heat exchanger. These and other objects, features and advantages will become apparent upon having reference to the detailed description of the invention herein.